“When I’d say, ‘It’s me,’ they’d have this look of disbelief,” Faustin says. Faustin, who is black and hails from Brooklyn, knew he was the first recorded black winemaker in Oregon, but, he adds, he didn’t want to own it. At least, not until 2015, when Oregon was celebrating 50 years of winemaking. “All they were talking about was legacies, pedigree, the past,” says Faustin. “No one was talking about the future.”

So Faustin—with the help of his filmmaker friend Jerry Bell Jr.—decided to make a documentary about Oregon’s minority winemakers. The film, calledRed, White & Black: An Oregon Wine Story, tells the stories of Faustin and several of his winemaking colleagues. Among them are Jesus Guillén, the Mexican-American winemaker at White Rose Estate who passed away in November 2018, but in just his second year as head winemaker, earned a 96 from the Wine Advocate for his “whole cluster” Pinot Noir; Jarod Sleet, now the assistant winemaker at ROCO Winery, who in the film was a cellar assistant at Argyle; Remy Drabkin of Remy Wines in McMinnville, Oregon, who worked her first crush in 1995 (at Ponzi) and is gay; and André Mack, a former sommelier at Per Se who now makes wines in Oregon under the Maison Noir label. A disparate crew, they have in common a desire to reach non–wine drinkers by making wine more accessible and less pretentious than how it is often perceived; the film vividly documents their ambitions and achievements.

The trailer for Red, White & Black: an Oregon Wine Story

Faustin himself could be called a maverick winemaker, though not because he’s a minority. His 15-acre vineyard is located in the urban West Hills of Portland, Oregon. When he decided to take over his in-laws’ vineyard in 2007, he had never had so much as a sip of wine. “I was like, worst case: I’ll make raisins!” he says, laughing. Now, after 10 years of winemaking, he’s got a sure hand. He works with six grape varieties: Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Gewürztraminer, Albariño, and Gamay Noir. Several of these wines sell out quickly. But Faustin is not much interested in chatting about terroir or skin contact. Geeky wine talk along those lines, he says, alienates the very people he hopes to bring into the wine-drinking fold. Instead, at his tasting room, hip-hop and R & B are the backdrop, creating a mellow, comfortable atmosphere for drinking wine—one where everybody feels welcome.

04 April 2018

I'd always thought of mead, the ancient alcoholic beverage made from fermented honey, as a cough syrup–like draught from Chaucer’s time. But a recent tasting organized by Chrissie Manion Zaerpoor, author of The Art of Mead Tasting & Food Pairing, changed my mind: I sipped meads that ranged from a dry sparkler that reminded me of a refreshing rosé, to a marionberry variety aged with chile peppers. Turns out, mead has as much range and variety as wine—and just like its grape-based sibling, it has terroir as well. And there’s never been a better moment to try mead. There were only about 30 meaderies in the U.S. two decades ago, and today, there are over 500. Want to taste the trend? Start with a visit to one of these great craft mead taprooms.

James Boicourt and Andrew Geffken founded Charm City Meadworks in 2014 and have just opened a new facility with 10 meads on tap. Outside the tasting room, their still meads—evocative of wine—come in 500 ml bottles; the carbonated ones come in 12-ounce cans. (Distribution is currently limited to the D.C./ Maryland/ Northern Virginia area.) Favorites include basil lemongrass, sweet blossom, and the seasonal mango comapeño, which packs some heat.

Brothers Nick and Phil Lorenz make 15session-style meads (carbonated and less than 10 percent ABV), the most popular of which is “Sting”—made of freshly juiced ginger and white clover honey. (It won a gold medal at the Mazer Cup.) They’re also experimenting with sour meads (fermented with Brettanomyces and lactobacillus) and braggots (mead fermented with malted grains). If you can’t get to their Philomath tasting room, rest assured: their meads are distributed to 10 states including California, Georgia, and Texas.

Ash Fischbein has his high school English teacher to thank for his mead career: he read about the beverage in Beowulf. “Back then, it was more about, ‘How can I get my friends drunk?’” laughs Fischbein. Now, Fischbein and his cousin Matt own Sap House Meadery, where their stand-out melomels — mead fermented with fruit — win awards at the Mazer Cup International mead competition. At their new mead pub, lined with rough-sawn pine, you can taste mead cocktails, mead- mosas, and (on Friday nights) pair dry semi-sweet mead with oysters.

Greg Fischer was six when he began beekeeping, so it’s hardly surprising that he became a mead-maker, opening Illinois’ first meadery 17 years ago. At Wild Blossom Meadery’s posh tasting room, you can try bourbon-cask aged meads like Sweet Desire, a blueberry mead, and a Barolo-style red, Pyment, that’s co-fermented with grape skins.

01 May 2017

I've been traveling to Cabo for years with my mom and step-dad and every time we go, it seems, there are more restaurants touting their locally-grown, organic produce. Not only that, there are now at least three organic farms in the arroyo outside of San Jose that have restaurants. I write about these on-farm restaurants for the May issue of Food & Wine. (Available with a digital or print subscription here.)

Here's a tease:

It’s dusk and I’m sitting with my husband on a lush 16-acre organic farm, sipping a glass of cabernet when I notice that the tree brushing up against my arm is festooned with pomegranates. It’s only 5:30PM but already the open-air bar to my right is spilling over with glamorously-dressed Californians and Canadians nursing carrot margaritas and watermelon-mint-basil juleps served in Mason jars and a band on a stage made of hay bales is belting out Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black. Rows of arugula, beets, carrots, collards, and mizuna line the field behind us, foreshadowing the unforgettable meal we’re about to consume.

I’m not in my agriculturally-rich home state of Oregon. I’m at Flora Farms in San José del Cabo, Mexico. When I first started coming to Los Cabos 18 years ago, it was impossible to find organic produce anywhere, let alone on restaurant menus. The Cape of Baja, home to both Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo, is arid and desert-like—I’d assumed it was inhospitable for farming.

Little did I know that in 1996, Gloria and Patrick Greene, expats from California, had quietly started growing organic vegetables on an estuary hidden behind the colonial town of San José. Back then, there was no marina and few people lived in the rural villages of Animas Bajas and La Choya; certainly no tourists drove out there. In fact, when it rained, the arroyo would flood, making these two villages—and the Greene’s yurt and farm—inaccessible. “When the arroyo used to run every summer, we’d be cut off for two to three days,” says Greene, laughing. (This was before the San José Marina—or the bridge to it—was built.)

Today, as we tour the farm with chef Guillermo Tellez, I marvel at how the whole Flora Farm enterprise has expanded since I first visited in 2012. The old growth mango grove, a magical spot for weddings and other events, now has its very own kitchen and a brand-new open-air rotisserie for grilling chickens. (Beets, wrapped in tinfoil, are roasted in the embers and served in a fabulous salad at dinner.) Owners of one of 10 culinary cottages— luxury straw bale homes—have access to a beautiful lap pool and hot tub, as well as unlimited organic vegetables and herbs. There’s even an on-site microbrewery, two clothing boutiques, and a brand-new spa and yoga center, complete with a barber shop and juice bar. “We are like our own little village,” says Tellez, whose hoop earrings and pointy salt-and-pepper goatee lend him a pirate-like vibe.

Wine glass in hand, I follow Tellez as he leads us past a wedding—the guests are mingling over cocktails in the mango grove—into his tiny meat cellar, where various cuts of heritage pigs dangle from strings. He’s justifiably proud of the kitchen’s ambitious charcuterie program, which yields dry-cured coppa, sopressata, and culatello (leg cut cured in a pig’s bladder). The cellar will soon double in size, he tells us, and a cheese cave is in the works. Right now, the staff milks six cows and makes their own butter, ricotta, and burrata. (The cave will allow Tellez to make cotija and other aged cheeses.)

Gloria’s motivation to start farming twenty years ago was simple: she had opened an organic restaurant in San José, and needed a ready supply of pesticide-free produce. The 10-acre plot of land that she and Patrick owned came with a mango orchard and a well. Though the soil wasn’t ideal for farming, the Greenes built it up with compost and cover-cropping. Within a few years, their flavor-packed vegetables were turning heads. Chef Charlie Trotter requested tomatoes and herbs for his restaurant at the One & Only Palmilla. Eventually, Trotter gave Gloria a wish list of heirloom varieties to grow: Black Krim and German pink tomatoes, Broad Windsor favas, nero di Toscana kale. Soon other area chefs were placing their orders.

Gloria had been hosting a farmers market and cooking classes on her property for years. In 2009, she began working with a local rancher to raise Spanish hogs, chickens, goats, and rabbits on a nearby ranch. She and Patrick opened Flora’s Field Kitchen the following year. The marina bridge, built that same year, made the journey to the farm easier, but it was still circuitous, via a steep, pothole-pocked dirt road. Nonetheless, guests arrived in droves. Even the likes of Thomas Keller and George Clooney were showing up for dinner. Today, the restaurant is so busy—they do breakfast, lunch, and dinner—that chef Tellez reserves all the farm’s produce, herbs, eggs, and meat for its own meal service, farm store, private events, and two markets.

Just-picked winter root vegetables for sale at Flora Farms

Flora’s Field Kitchen seems to have started a trend. A few miles to the west, chef-farmer Enrique Silva has been farming organically at Los Tamarindos since 2002, and opened an on-farm restaurant in 2011. And last year, Cameron Watt and Stuart McPherson, expats from Vancouver, B.C. snapped up a 25-acre site between Los Tamarindos and Flora Farms. But the farm-to-table ethos has also caught on throughout Los Cabos. All the best resort restaurants along the corridor—from brand-new Comal at Chileno Bay Resort to the restaurants at the One & Only Palmilla—source their produce from local farms and ranches. And every Saturday morning, San José’s boisterous Mercado Orgánico attracts locals and travelers who come for its farm-fresh eggs and produce, live music, yoga classes, and tasty Mexican fare like Tlacoyos and tamales.

03 April 2017

I'm pretty excited about my first story in Food & Wine, about Dana Frank's beguiling new natural-wine-focused restaurant, Dame.

Reporting this meant I got to know the Oregon winemakers who are on the menu at Dame, as well as their wines. Five of the winemakers were at the dinner: Kelley Fox (of Kelley Fox Wines), Dan Rinke (Johan), Chad Stocks (Minimus and Omero), Steven Thompson (Analemma), and Scott Frank (Bow & Arrow), Dana's husband.

Frank pouring wine from a banquette at Dame

My story is not available online yet, but here's a tease:

Things can get geeky when you hang out with natural-wine makers. Conversation flits from how much VA, or volatile acidity, a wine should have, to why Pinot Gris ought to be turned into a red rather than a white. Opinions fly. Cursing is compulsory. And, if you've opened a half dozen of their bottles, you're in for a rollicking good time.

On a recent night at Dame, sommelier Dana Frank's new natural-wine-focused restaurant in Portland's Concordia neighborhood, she'd gathered her winemaker friends for a spring feast paired with their best vintages. "Yes, these are really unique, interesting wines," said Frank as she popped open a bottle of Bow & Arrow's Melon, a supercrisp, golden Loire Valley varietal made by her husband, Scott Frank, who was at the other end of the table. "But they're also really delicious."